Just before the end of the year, the editors at GQ got together and published a look back at some of the “most important and best games” of the last decade. Here’s how they decided on which games to include:
Some of the best games we’ve ever seen came out in the past decade, but the 2010s were also the most turbulent, transformative, and revealing years for video games. Game development costs skyrocketed to new, unsustainable heights. Some games became never-ending, always online, services that you pay for in subscriptions. As advancements were made in public health care, indie game development flourished, and then regressed accordingly as it was dismantled. Games also reached beyond what was previously thought possible, delivering beautifully detailed worlds, touching and intimate narratives, and shared cultural experiences unlike any others. Here, according to the GQ staff, are the most important and best games of the decade.
“The 17 Best Games That Shaped the Decade” zigzagged it’s way through many of the titles that reshaped the game industry over the last ten years, as well as two that originally launched in Early Access in the previous decade (Derek Yu’s Spelunky and Mojang’s Minecraft). But which other games made the cut?
GQ – The 17 Best Games That Shaped the Decade
- Bloodborne
- Depression Quest
- Destiny
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Five Nights at Freddy’s
- Gone Home
- Journey
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Mass Effect 2
- Minecraft
- Nier: Automata
- Overwatch
- Papers Please
- Spelunky
- Stardew Valley
- Undertale
- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Without ranking the selections, GQ honed in on adventures both big and small (Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Toby Fox’s Undertale, and thatgamecompany’s Journey), as well as a dystopian simulation that went somewhere no game has never gone before (Lucas Pope’s Papers Please).
Further down the list, From Software’s Bloodborne and Platinum Games’s Nier: Automata introduced players to stylish and bold new worlds, while a pair of multiplayer shooters (Overwatch and Destiny) changed how that genre was played.
There was also a trio of expansive RPGs (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Mass Effect 2, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), a few very personal indies (Depression Quest, Stardew Valley, and Gone Home), and whatever Five Nights At Freddy’s was.
Even when you stop at 17 games, it really was a pretty good decade.